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Army Readiness Command

USAR Readiness Command is the Army's leading partner in improving and sustaining mobilization readiness for all units throughout the United States Army Reserve. As an extension of the United States Army Reserve Command, USAR Readiness Command works to assist and assess units to attain and sustain mobilization readiness standards by providing high-value coaching, mentoring, and training of the command team and recommending solutions for USAR mobilization readiness challenges.

The vast majority of reserve units are made up of companies or modularized detachments of companies. Institutional readiness is therefore not determined by evaluating ready brigades or divisions but at the lowest level of command-the company. Administering medical support, purifying water, delivering ammunition, and establishing communication nodes or evacuating and registering the fallen are basic services for any army no matter what the future might hold.

Under the Readiness Command, nine command assistance and assessment teams (CAAT) spearhead an unprecedented effort to engender a culture of readiness at the company level. Like other traditional readiness inspection teams, CAATs are staffed with functional experts who conduct no-nonsense evaluations of unit mobilization readiness. What makes the CAAT unique is its mandated role to also coach, teach and mentor company-level leaders on the challenges of mobilizing citizen-soldiers.

Normally, these functions would be performed by the parent organization. But in the USAR, that leadership chain stretches over several states since reserve companies are located to sustain recruitment. Transportation companies, as an example, are sited near rural civilian trucking districts or medical companies next to urban areas where civilian hospitals are nearby, but the battalion or brigade leadership may be located a state or more away. Worst, many subordinate units fall administratively under battalions and brigades with different branch skills. For example, a postal company might be aligned under a chemical battalion or a transportation company under a quartermaster battalion. Thus, CAATs were designed as much to provide high-value mentorship directly to company-level leaders as much they were to evaluate and improve unit mobilization readiness. The Readiness Command has also ensured that its surrogate leadership formula does not lead to a separate leadership chain.40

The "readiness Command" nomenclature is a bit confusing, since during the 1970s it was applied to the Department of the Army Readiness Command (DARCOM). In January 1976 the the U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC) was redesignated as U.S. Army Materiel Development and Readiness Command (DARCOM). DARCOM was redesignated Army Materiel Command in 1984. Subsequently in the 1980s, the US Army Readiness Command (USARRED) was the Army component of US Readiness Command (REDCOM) which was a Unified Command that eventually evolved into Joint Forces Command. USARRED exercised chain-of-command through the appropriate CONUSAs to the State Area Commands (STARC). By 2001 the US Army Materiel Command was billing itself once again as the "Army Readiness Command."